Here’s an interesting article about some cashless technologies in use today in the land up North. It’s brief and features a lot of cellphone payment related technologies, such as feeding the parking meters, but it’s worth taking a peek at. I think payment via cell phones is probably a risky endeavor, as people likely lose cell phones more frequently than they do credit cards (I make that claim based on no actual evidence), but the Canadians know what they’re doing when it comes to payment technology I suppose (again, a baseless claim).

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4 Responses to “Canada First To Go Cashless?”

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I recall reading last year about cell phone payment technology being widely used in Japan. I think Canada may be a bit ahead of the U.S., but I seriously doubt that they’re going to be the ‘first’ to go cashless.

Greetings from Canada. I haven’t heard any such thing, and I actually write about RFID and cashless payments at 6 different websites. My pick, based on research, is South Korea. They have a LOT of RFID trials going on. They’ve embraced it – at least the government has – whereas Canadians (and probably Americans) are quite concerned with privacy issues and I doubt they’ll ever be first to go cashless.

There are cashless trials here, though. The small city I live in as actually one of about three “demographic microcosms” in Canada, which supposedly represent the rest of Canada. If a trial of any consumer product doesn’t do well here, it does not get wider release. A cashless card, Mondex, was given a trial run here, and in a small city in Quebec province, and one other place. It did very poorly and was never released widely. However, this was a couple of years before the Internet went public. Maybe things will be different now, maybe not.

It would take a long time to go cashless. I mean how could you buy anything at a yardsale? But many people have their check sent to the bank and they write checks and use a credit card, so many people see very little money. But credit cards are what got a lot of people in trouble. They spend money they don’t have and then their cards are stolen and this requires a lot of time and trouble to straighten out things. When most people only need a card to for emergencies. But it makes it handy when you can pump gas and slide your card and leave. So the covenience draws you in.

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